


Persona Five: Stuck In A Loop

by storyteller217



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyteller217/pseuds/storyteller217
Summary: A novel retelling of the Person Five Storyline with a focus on the Romantic entanglements between the characters.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Okumura Haru, Kitagawa Yusuke/Sakura Futaba, Kurusu Akira/Niijima Makoto, Sakamoto Ryuji/Takamaki Ann
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Persona Five: Stuck In A Loop

All this has happened before….. and it will happen again.

The young man ran, his long athletic legs moving fast as the northern winds. Fast enough that his midnight black trench coat trailed out behind him like some kind of old fashion cape. It made the young man look like he’d just stepped out of an old fashion noir style movie. Bight neon lights overhead of cascading color, loud somewhat catchy upbeat music blared, and even more pressing the sound of the casino’s patrons shouting back and forth with each other all threatened to distract him from his grand escape. So far no one in the large expansive casino had noticed him. They were to busy playing the game of chance and trying to win big. The dark vice off human greed and lust for chance displayed itself prominently here. You could practically FEEL the hunger in the air and the need. He was lucky they were so caught up however, given his state of attire and the vibrant white mask on his face he rather stood out among the teeming masses. Luck always ran out though… sooner rather than later. In any instant he could lose his pressing advantage.

The young man in the weird outfit couldn’t recall why he was running or why he was even in a casino for that matter! Like his life had somehow began right in this very moment. Trying to access his memories felt rather hazy in his inner mind and try as he might he couldn’t. Who he was, what he was doing, and even his real name! They were all lost behind a haze in his mind that seemed impenetrable. Without the context, he could only let his instincts guide him. There had to be a reason he was booking it after all. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up straight and he felt an pressing sense of danger all around him. This was a casino! He was dressed like some kind of thief and that was bound to get noticed by the security team inside of the casino. The young man had his doubts that they wouldn’t buy the excuse that he couldn’t remember what he was doing here and why either! Heck, he himself couldn’t buy it! He might have been living it but it didn’t feel real. Matter of fact, it felt like a…

Dream

This Story Is A Work of fiction

The world is not as it should be. It’s filled with distortion, and ruin can no longer be avoided. Those who oppose fate and desire change.. from time to time they’re called…

Tricksters.

You…. You are the Trickster…

And now is the time to rise against the abyss of distortion!

Something jostled him, jerking him out of the deep depths of sleep. His head jerked forward mop of black dark black hair landing on top of his large black rimmed glasses. For a second his hair blocked the vision in his left eye hiding the vibrant green as the dream of the casino played in his mind. “What was that?” He asked himself murmuring it as he finally reached up. One large hand swept his hair back as he focused on his breathing. Even breaths as he tried to get his heart to calm down and cease it’s erratic beating. He might not have been running in real life! But his brain was so deep in the dream that it felt like he’d been! What was strange, at least in his mind was that the dream felt so real! Like really real.

“How strange.” Akira Kurusu thought to himself as he tapped his pale pointed chin. “It must be the nervousness of moving to a new place. Why else would I dream such a weird dream?” His mind tried to rationalize it, to make actual sense of what the strange dream could have meant. Even so, that strange dream lingered hinting at something that he didn’t know or wasn’t quite aware of inside of himself. Akira recalled a book he once read, a book on the study of dreams. He could barely recall the particulars but he did remember something about books being a gateway into the deeper mind. The casino could represent his new school for instance and the fact that he was running through it could have meant that the young transfer student was worried about his first day! Akira’s lips pursed for several minutes thinking it over before he finally slumped back in his seat on the trail and shook his head. “What a loud of crap!” He thought to himself before chuckling at the way his mind worked. He might have been nervous… but he wasn’t going to obsess over some silly little dream because of said nerves!

He had bigger things to worry about anyways. Akira’s new college school being one of many the 21-year-old young man was dealing with inside of his head. What could be more pressing than moving suddenly to a new school? For Akira the issue of his probation was somewhat more pressing and distressing. The reminder of THAT night replaced the lingering dream quickly as he thought about it. Suddenly it was all he could think about, the night that his entire life changed for worse. Akira mind flashed with the specifics of which he could recall with vivid and pinpoint accuracy. The heavy swollen moon up ahead, the smell of rain from the evenings fall, and the light gasp of the woman as her blouse was torn. Pervy as it sounded… he could even recall the color of her bra as he rushed forward to help her white and pink with little frills on the cleavage. What he recalled most about that night though was the panicked look on her face? That and the burning eyes of a man who had no problem grabbing a woman, pulling her into a back alleyway, and no doubt raping her just for the fun.

“Please Help…”

“Damn Brat! I’ll sue!”

It didn’t matter that Akira prevented the woman from rape. She was paid off into silence and it was some punk kid vs a man he heard was something of a businessman and politician. Sufficient to say, no one believed him and Akira’s name and the name of his family was dragged through mud. It was such a scandal that Akira’s parents didn’t have much choice but to send him out of their small little town and to the big city for schooling. This man that he was going to live with… Akira didn’t know much of anything about him aside from he was a friend of a friend. How sad was that? That he was being passed over to someone like that? Much as Akira wanted to rage and refuse to go his parents were pretty clear that this wasn’t something he had a choice in. There wasn’t anyone else to take him and it was as simple as that! Akira could still recall his mothers words.

“Oh honey,” She’d said with a soft smile. “You’re such a beacon off light. Always a smile on your face. Just keep that jovial nature okay?”

“Huh,” Akira scoffed out loud as the train pulled to a stop and he rose along with the others… “Yeah right.” While his mother was right and he was known to be a bit of a “Jokester” among his friends this was basically exile. What was worse? Being exiled for committing a crime…. Or exile for having stopped one?! If you asked him it was certainly the former and not the later.

His cell phone buzzed, the brand new one he’d scrounged the funds for before leaving home. Fishing it out as he stepped out he was surprised when a ding of notification alerted him that a new app finished installing. New app? He hadn’t queued anything for download! He unlocked his phone and began searching for the app in question as he walked down the steps. Out of the corner of his eyes a flash of yellow caught his eye, and he looked up just in time to see a cat with black fur and blue eyes watching him on one of the railings. The second he looked at the creature though it turned and flitted into the darkness under the subway tracks. It’s surprisingly intelligence eyes haunted him.

“Wait…” Akira’s attention was pulled back to his phone. There was indeed an app that had downloaded onto his phone. It was pulsating right in the center of his screen making the other apps behind it gray. His thumb brushed on it, tapping it without thinking about it. The weird app disappeared, only to reappear seconds late with a map! It had a red background, with a weird eye like symbol “painted” on the red background. Instead of an iris there was a star dead center of the eye. Akira frowned murmuring under his breath as he tried to tap and hold down on it to delete it. He tried… but instead the app grew once more! Filling his entire screen this time! Furious and worried that he had downloaded some kind of spam at this point he swore under his breath as he tried to force close the app. It remained stubbornly however leading him to believe he needed to turn off his phone so he could reset the whole thing. Dangerous as it was he stopped in the middle of the square so he could try turning the device off. He was so focused he didn’t notice it….

Then, his life got stranger.

Everyone froze! From the cyclist breezing past him to the cars themselves. Even the gossipy girls ahead of him in their school uniform froze, hair still mid swing. Akira’s green eyes swept across the area and with a large degree of shock he realized that at least a 150 people and 15 cars were all frozen behind him. He was so surprised he dropped his phone! Having to scramble to catch it mid fall lest it break and he put shit out of luck! His hands finally caught it, pianist like fingers wrapping around it as his mind struggled to figure out what was going on. Did the app or the phone itself shock him? Was he actually in a coma right now? The only thing that possibly made sense in his eyes was that he was imagining things or in some kind of mental distress! After all… regular people didn’t just freeze like this!

“What’s going on!” Akira Kurusu shouted out with panic, breaking the unnatural stillness of the square and the very absence of ssound. Was there no sound either? Oh god he was in a coma wasn’t he?! “Would someone please answer-“

In front of him, large blue flames erupted. They were so close the young man scrambled back lest he get burned. He realized later that he never felt an ounce of heat from them. They simply sprang into existence as real a he was in this frozen intersection. The flames were massive, at least two stories tall. They moved not as normal flames but seemed almost alive… they moved with a sinister intent like a snake coiling around a trapped mouse. They snapped into odd shapes as Akira starred ranging from a cat of nine tails, to a mask, and then finally to a winged creature with a top hat. There was something… vaguely familiar about that form something that Akira’s mind tried to grab onto. Seconds late his hand flew up forehead pressing into his temples as his eyes screwed shut with pain. A flash, like a spike running into his forehead hit him. A bright light behind his eyes as he saw the flame creature inside of him. Then a twisted reflection of his own face! With demonic yellow eyes and a grin that could only be described as maniacal in nature. There for only a brief instance!

The sound of the intersection came back to him. The regular din of the mid-morning commute. The businessman talking on his cell phone, the girls gossiping, and somewhere a horn honked. A bicyclist swept past him the sudden rush of air causing his hair to sweep back. “Watch it buddy!” The bicyclist called out to Akira as he continued to peddle furiously. Akira’s eyes opened just in time to see the businessman give him a disapproving look. Akira could only imagine what he was thinking, the disgust in seeing some punk kid jut checking out in the middle of a four-way intersection like this. The headache that forced Akira’s eyes closed receded as if it’d never been there to begin with. The flame creature? It was nowhere to be seen. It made the whole thing feel stranger than fiction! Combine it with his weird dream (which also had a weird mask involved) and Akira realized that maybe there was more to his stress than even he realized. It had to be that right? Cause there was no way that the flame creature, the dream, and the frozen square were anything more than his stress coming out in a weird manner.

Right?

His phone buzzed again and he glanced down. His eyes widened a second later as he took in the app. There it was! Still on his screen but now a normal size. It took all of a second for Akira to make a decision. He highlighted it, half expecting to be given another weird episode. This time however the app began to jiggle and shake, indicating that he could delete it as one would a normal app. He dragged it to the bottom waiting for the garbage can to appear. Once it did he let it drop in, hearing the satisfying crunch on the app being “crumpled” up and deposited into the delete folder. One tap later and it was gone! Erased from his phone as he slid his headphones in and started the music program instead. Smooth jazz filled his ear, a nice saxophone rift from one of his favorite artist crooning in his ears. He decided right then and there to forget the entire thing! To push it so far out of his mind that it fell into an abyss. This year he wouldn’t make any waves, he would keep his nose to the ground and survive.

He swore it!


End file.
